Morning journal and courier., 1887-04-07

pairing this oration, and looked upon hi
 work as 8 masterpiece, and I believe tolt
 MT. Lincoln so, and he said that the them
 was great enough to inspire such an orato
 as Everett to his best. MT. Lincoln thinl
 had not thought of saying anything himself
 but told him that he would be expected te | make few remarks, for it would not be per
 mitted him to be silent. He sat for some | moments absorbed in thought, and at last | began to feel in his pockets as if for loose l paper. I asked him if he wanted paper and l pencil, and he said, F'Yes, scrap of paper, ,
 and opened my valise and gave him two or l three sheets of note paper. He drew up his 1 long knees and. putting book on them, | wrote, jotting down, as I supposed, few | heads or suggestions. He wrote right along l without hesitation erasure, and filled one page and part of another. Then he folded I it up and put it in his pocket, simply saying | that he had set down a few lines that had occurred to him to say.
 ''At the cemetery at the proper time he arose, put on his spectacles and drew these sheets from his pocket. I do not think he had looked at them again after writing them in the cars, and in low voice, which could be heard but few feet away from the stage, he read those splendid lines. The few who heard him were most profoundly impressed,
 but upon the vast throng who saw him the oration made no impression whatever, be- cause few heard it. No proper report of the oration was made, and Mr. Lincoln crumpled the manuscript up and would very likely have thrown it away if I had not asked hina for 1t. It was not until it had been print ed in newspaper and then widely copied that it's wonderful beauty, both in thought and literary workmanship, was recognized, and MT. Lincoln was very much surprised to learn that scholars were quoting it as the best model of pure English and true eloquence the language had furnished, at least in America"
 There is no doubt according to Mir Me Pherson and others who knew Lincoln we'll
 that he was very greatly gratifed with the evidence that he received in the last years of his life that scholars and cultivated wri- ters were paying the highest tribute to his charms as writer of English. But he was even more surprised at it. He knew that cultivated men, even after his debates with Douglas, and after his first inaugural were of opinion that he was utterly without eth CT literary powers than those of a good stump speaker. He was believed to be man of strong character, but wholly with out literary polish, and it was generally be- lieved that such polish as his greatest speeches, such that delivered in Cooper Institute in the winter of 1860 revealed, was the work of some cultivated friends or some skillful secretaries. He had advanced far in his first term before his literary abilities began to be admitted by scholars, but his second inaugural, very hastily written composition, and the Gettysburg oration brought the long delayed tributes. One of his historians points out that long before MT. Lincoln had more than local repute he had given proof of great literary abilities. This historian quotes Lincolns speech made while in Congress in 194S on the subject of the Mexican war and says: "With this speech on record, it is strange that the genuine literary abilities of the man were so long and consistently ignored by literary people. There were men who voted for him for the presidency more than twelve years after Fard-twelve years of culture and development to him-who were surprised to find his messages grammatically constructed, and who suspected the inter vention of 8 secretary whenever any touch of elegance appeared in his writings" Mr. McPherson says that there were men of cul- tivationwho seemed dumb bfounded when some of MT. Lincoln's speeches were given to them to read to refute their assertion that he was an illiterate boor, and some of these could not believe that MT. Lincoln could or did l write these speeches